Bob Weir Biography

Robert Hall "Bob" Weir ( born October 16, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead. Weir also founded and played in several other bands during and after his career with the Grateful Dead, including Kingfish, the Bob Weir Band, Bobby and the Midnites, Scaring the Children, RatDog, and his newest band Furthur, co-led by former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.

During his career with the Grateful Dead, Weir played mostly rhythm guitar and sang most of the band's rock-n-roll tunes (Jerry Garcia sang The Dead's more melodic tunes). He is known for his unique style of complex voiceleading, bringing unusual depth and a new approach to the role of rhythm guitar expression.

Early life

Weir was born in San Francisco, California, and was raised by his adoptive parents in the suburb of Atherton. He began playing guitar at age thirteen after less successful experimentation with the piano and the trumpet. He had trouble in school because of undiagnosed dyslexia and he was expelled from nearly every school he attended, including Menlo Atherton High School in Atherton and Fountain Valley School in Colorado. At Fountain Valley he met John Perry Barlow, who later wrote the lyrics to a number of Grateful Dead songs.

Career

On New Year's Eve, 1963, 16-year-old Weir and another underage friend were wandering the back alleys of Palo Alto, looking for a club that would admit them, when they heard banjo music. They followed the music to its source, Dana Morgan's Music Store. Here, a young Jerry Garcia, oblivious to the date, was waiting for his students to arrive. Weir and Garcia spent the night playing music together and then decided to form a band. The Beatles significantly influenced their musical direction. "The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band," said Bob Weir. "What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing." Originally called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, the band was later renamed The Warlocks and eventually the Grateful Dead.

Weir played rhythm guitar and sang a large portion of the lead vocals through all of the Dead's 30-year career. In the fall of 1968, the Dead played some concerts without Weir and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. These shows, with the band billed as "Mickey and the Hartbeats", were intermixed with full-lineup Grateful Dead concerts. In his biography of Jerry Garcia, Blair Jackson notes, "Garcia and Lesh determined that Weir and Pigpen were not pulling their weight musically in the band? Most of the band fights at this time were about Bobby's guitar playing." Late in the year, the band relented and took Weir and Pigpen back in full-time.)

The incident apparently led to a period of significant growth in Weir's guitar playing. Phil Lesh said that when drummer Mickey Hart left the band temporarily in early 1971, he was able to hear Weir's playing more clearly than ever and "I found myself astonished, delighted and excited beyond measure at what Bobby was doing." Lesh described Weir's playing as "quirky, whimsical and goofy" and noted his ability to play on the guitar chord voicings (with only four fingers) that one would normally hear from a keyboard (with up to ten fingers).

In the late 1970s, Weir began to experiment with slide guitar techniques and perform certain songs during Dead shows using the slide. His unique guitar style is strongly influenced by the hard bop pianist McCoy Tyner and he has cited artists as diverse as John Coltrane, the Rev. Gary Davis, and Igor Stravinsky as influences. Weir was known for using periodic guitar moves during various times at Grateful Dead concerts to invigorate the crowd and to create musical momentum.

Weir's first solo album Ace appeared in 1972, with the Grateful Dead performing as the band on the album, though credited individually. Included in this line-up were Keith Godchaux and his wife Donna, both of whom would be in the band by the time of the album's release. A live version of the album's best-known song, "Playing in the Band", had been issued on the Skull & Roses album of the previous year. While continuing to perform as a member of the Grateful Dead, in 1975 and 1976 Weir played in the Bay Area band Kingfish with friends Matt Kelly and Dave Torbert. He later contributed to Kelly's 1987 album A Wing and a Prayer, on Relix Records. In 1978 he fronted the Bob Weir Band with Brent Mydland, who joined the Grateful Dead the following year. In 1980 he formed another side band, Bobby and the Midnites.

Shortly before Garcia's death in 1995, Weir formed another band, RatDog Revue, later shortened to RatDog. As of April 9, 2008, Weir had performed approximately 800 shows with RatDog. Known for his raspy, deep tone, in RatDog Weir sings covers by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, and Willie Dixon while also performing many Grateful Dead classics. In addition, Ratdog performs many of their own originals, most of which were released on the album Evening Moods.

In 1994, he was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.

Weir has participated in the various reformations of the Grateful Dead's members, including 1998, 2000, and 2002 stints as The Other Ones and in 2003, 2004 and 2009 as The Dead. In 2008 he performed in the two Deadheads for Obama concerts. In 2009 Bob Weir and Phil Lesh formed a new band called Furthur"?so-named in honor of Ken Kesey's famous psychedelically-painted bus.

In 2011, Weir founded the Tamalpais Research Institute, also known as TRI Studios. TRI is a high-tech recording studio and virtual music venue, used to stream live concerts over the internet in high-definition.

In 2012, Weir toured with Chris Robinson, the front man for the Black Crowes, and singer/songwriter Jackie Greene. Together the group is the Weir, Robinson, & Greene Acoustic Trio. At the Wakarusa Music Festival where American Songwriter reported, "the crowd's affirmation of their choice as they accompanied Weir singing, 'ashes, ashes, all fall down,' during the Grateful Dead tune "Throwing Stones".

Weir resuscitated Ratdog in March 2013. The Ratdog Quartet debuted on March 3, at the Sweetwater Music Hall. The Ratdog Quartet is Bob Weir with Jay Lane, Robin Sylvester, and Jonathan Wilson. Jason Crosby was their featured guest at the first two shows.

On April 25, 2013 Weir collapsed onstage during a Furthur performance at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York. The band finished the show without him. He performed with the band two days later in Atlantic City, but on April 29 a representative announced that Weir will be "unable to perform in any capacity for the next several weeks" for unspecified reasons.

Personal life

Weir remained single throughout his years with the Grateful Dead, although he lived for several years (1969"1975) with a woman named Frankie Hart, who was a former go-go dancer at the Peppermint Lounge in New York, and later, on the TV shows Hullaballoo and Shindig. Frankie was the inspiration for Weir's well-known song "Sugar Magnolia". Frankie met Bob through Mickey Hart, who dated her briefly after they met following her first Grateful Dead show in New York in 1968. Her real name at that time was Frankie Azzara (from a previous marriage), but used the stage name Frankie Hart (she apparently "borrowed" Mickey's last name). Although she and Weir never married, she adopted his last name after moving in with him and was subsequently known as Frankie Weir. For a short time, she was a secretary for the Beatles' publicist, Derek Taylor, and subsequently an assistant to George Harrison. She also sang vocals in the mid-1970s for a Bay Area band, James and the Mercedes (which occasionally opened for Kingfish), starring James Ackroyd, from James and the Good Brothers. On July 15, 1999, Weir married Natascha Münter. They have two daughters, Monet Weir and Chloe Kaelia Weir. Natascha's younger sister Leilani Munter is a race car driver in the NASCAR circuit.

Weir is on the board of directors of the Rex Foundation, the Furthur Foundation, and HeadCount. He is an honorary member of the board of directors of the environmental organization Rainforest Action Network, along with Woody Harrelson, Bonnie Raitt, and John Densmore. He is also on the honorary board of directors of Little Kids Rock, a non-profit organization that provides free musical instruments and instruction to children in under-served public schools throughout the U.S.

Weir is reported to be a member of the Bohemian Club and has attended and performed at the secretive club's annual bacchanal at the Bohemian Grove.

Guitars

Early pictures of The Warlocks in concert show him playing a Gretsch Duo-Jet, and after the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead, Weir briefly played a Rickenbacker 365, a Guild Starfire IV acoustic-electric (with Garcia playing an identical Cherry Red Starfire IV, which appear very similar to the Gibson ES-335) as well as a Fender Telecaster before settling on for the following decade, the Gibson ES-335. Weir usually played a cherry red 1965 ES-335 until the band's hiatus in 1974, although he did occasionally use a Gibson ES-345. Weir played a black Gibson Les Paul in 1971. Weir can also be seen playing a sunburst ES-335 in The Grateful Dead Movie, filmed in October 1974. During the early 1970s, Weir also used a 1961 or 1962 Gibson SG.

In 1974, Weir began working with Jeff Hasselberger at Ibanez to develop a custom instrument. Weir began playing the Ibanez 2681 during the recording of Blues for Allah; this was a testbed instrument with sliding pickups that Hasselberger used to develop several additional 2681s for use onstage, as well as Weir's custom "Cowboy Fancy" guitar, which he played from 1976 until the mid-1980s. Weir began using a Modulus Blackknife at that point, and continued to play the Blackknife, along with a hybrid Modulus/Casio guitar for the "Space" segment of Grateful Dead concerts for the rest of that band's history. Weir's acoustic guitars include several Martins, a Guild, an Ovation, and a line of Alvarez-Yairi signature models.

Of late, photos on his website show Weir playing most often a Modulus G3FH custom and has returned to using a Gibson ES-335. He seems to have retired a 1956 Fender Telecaster.

Discography

With the Grateful Dead

As bandleader and compilations

• Ace - Bob Weir (1972)
• Kingfish - Kingfish (1976)
• Live 'n' Kickin' - Kingfish (1977)
• Heaven Help The Fool - Bob Weir (1978)
• Bobby and the Midnites - Bobby and the Midnites (1981)
• Where the Beat Meets the Street - Bobby and the Midnites (1984)
• Kingfish in Concert: King Biscuit Flower Hour - Kingfish (1996)
• Live - Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman (1998)
• Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions - Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions (1999)
• Evening Moods - RatDog (2000)
• Live at Roseland - RatDog (2001)
• Weir Here " The Best of Bob Weir - compilation (2004)

See also